Fastathon. x.x

I agreed to do the Fast-a-Thon at my university for a couple of reasons.

To start, it's a good cause. For each person that participates, local grocery stores donate food to food banks throughout the St. Louis area.

Then too, one of the Nemerovs asked us if we would.

But finally, because I don't think I've been truly, involuntarily hungry, once in my life. That seems like the kind of experience that might be valuable for a writer, particularly one that wants to write about highly-stratified post-apocalyptic societies.

So I went hungry today.

I whinged about it a bit in guild. I'm going to whinge a bit about it here. Because, damnit, I am >..<

So hungry that it has to be in little "angry face" quotation marks, in fact.

I won't say I'm to the point where I'm fantasizing about food. But I am definitely to the point where I bitterly resent anyone who brings anything edible into my vicinity. I can smell the bag of white cheddar popcorn some guy at the checkout desk forty feet away is eating. I'm just about ready to flip over the library desk, grab the popcorn, and make for it like the Trix rabbit.

Seriously. I've been watching people eat all day. You don't notice it until you're not allowed, how much time we spend with our mouths wrapped around edibles. I don't know how Muslims get through a month of this.

The friend that recommended we fast warned that there might be side-effects. Dizziness, tiredness, inability to focus . . . I don't know that I notice those much worse than I have at other times, but I'm notorious for skipping meals. I have gone this long without eating before . . . but I don't think I've ever so persistently ignored food in the face of hunger.

How much worse if I simply couldn't afford to eat?

That's the reality for Altair, at least. Dinner gets scrounged. Supplies or meals, when bought, come out of hard-earned stashes of cash, and when there is no more money, it's sell something or go without.

Not sure that it helps to put this in a literary context. I am most definititely fantasizing in an inappropriate fashion about marzipan, and marzipan (in theory) will not appear in my story.

x.x

Fooooooood.

-jen